


I've come to be the stranger that you keep

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Dorks in Love, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kittens, Literary References & Allusions, Living Together, M/M, Robb Stark is a Gift, Romance, Sex Work, Slow Burn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, also all the lady chatterley-related stuff is all richard madden's fault guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:07:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4946098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Does being around children for the entire day make you want to read shit that they couldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Robb can’t help it – he laughs at that, and doesn’t even bother to keep it down.</i>
</p><p><i>“Maybe that’s part of it,” he admits, and then Theon excuses himself because he’s seeing a</i> regular<i> driving his way and Robb gets into the house and up the stairs and wondering if he could get away with asking the guy out for coffee without looking like he has the wrong intentions.</i></p><p>
  <i>Whichever wrong intentions can someone have in this situation, but he’s plenty sure that if you’re doing sex work for a living and trying to get through university at the same time you probably aren’t interested in relationships, and Robb is definitely not ever going to pay someone he wants to sleep with for that – the last thing he’d want would be for Theon to think that it was headed there all along.</i>
</p><p><i>He’s </i>never<i> going to tell anyone he’s related to that he might be in the process of maybe falling for the hooker working on the corner next to his house.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	I've come to be the stranger that you keep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [childofthewolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/childofthewolves/gifts).



> Uh. So, like, TWO MONTHS AGO, it was tumblr user ayaawesome's birthday. I was like 'hey if you prompt me I'd totally like to write you a thing'. She tells me *throbb hooker au*. I go like 'oh sure I totally can do it', and then it goes out of my control as usual and - yeah. Have the fic where Theon gets himself through university with sex work, I don't even know what I was thinking. Also, this contains fairly huge spoilers for Lady Chatterley's Lover but in my defense I wrote half of this last month when I was on a OMG RICHARD MADDEN IS PLAYING MELLORS IN LADY CHATTERLEY AND I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FIVE TIMES IN THREE DAYS high so that's 99% of the reason that I went for that novel for my plot purposes. I don't even know. BLAME RICHARD.
> 
> Also, I'm still pissed at the show for what they did with Team Dragonstone so that's why there's a lot more team Stannis in here than I had originally planned. With Selyse I'm going with book characterization - any fans might wanna skip this /o\
> 
> Technical disclaimers: Theon's lit essay is _totally_ half-assed by yours truly and I did _not_ study English Lit professionally so just assume it actually makes sense, but if someone who actually does that job reads it and thinks that I'm completely off the mark, they're probably right. Give me some poetical license /o\ other than that, nothing belongs to me, the title is from Joe Pug's _Hymn 101_ which is a great song which I'm mentioning because he's independent and needs advertising. Also I did all the possible research about community colleges in the UK but there wasn't really much around so if there's something I got wrong either point that out to me and I'll see to change it if possible, and if not please just give me some more poetical license.
> 
> Further note re the community college/university education part: when I researched the grades most sources agreed on saying that while the technical maximum you get for a paper is 100, it's really hard to get there and 80 is in general the highest average you get, so anything over 80 isn't too common/means exceptional good work while you pass with a 50 or something, and I based myself on that as far as the grades mentioned in here go so that's why they might look lower than one would imagine if it's actually very good work. (Obviously if someone from the UK knows better and the internet was lying to me please tell me and I'll rectify. :) )

Robb notices the guy as soon as he moves in. Or better, his mom notices the guy while she, Jon and Sansa are helping him unload boxes inside his new place – Robb can barely believe that he’s actually making enough to rent himself a nice two-room apartment these days, not when it seems like he was in high school just last year. Anyway, at least someone has left the nest, as Uncle Brandon put it when he came over for dinner last week. Hilarious.

Anyway, he had been trying to sort out in which box he had put the kitchen supplies when his mom comes into the room.

“You said this was a nice neighborhood,” she says, sounding… well, not _worried_ , but not so convinced about it.

“… It is?” Robb had looked into it – it’s not really far in the outskirts but it’s definitely not in the center, and other than regular bars and supermarkets and a few other shops, it’s mostly just residential buildings. Not particularly pricey ones though, which is why the rent is affordable, but it’s hardly a slum.

“Well, how about _that_ then?”

She nods towards the window, and Robb goes looking – huh. There’s someone standing on the street corner. He can’t see the face, but it’s definitely a guy, wearing torn and fairly skinny jeans, a leather jacket, and a pair of boots that aren’t falling apart but definitely have seen better days. He’s also smoking a cigarette.

Considering the way he’s leaning against the wall and that the weather is too chilly for torn and skinny jeans, there’s no doubt about his line of work.

Robb shrugs. “I hadn’t even noticed. And I haven’t seen anyone else, well, doing that. It’s probably just him. But I mean, it’s – it’s a living, I guess?”

His mom doesn’t seem that convinced but then she shrugs and tells him that the box with the kitchen supplies is actually in the kitchen.

Robb doesn’t think about the guy until he’s long done unpacking, his new place looks like a flat and not a battlefield. For that matter, he doesn’t actually see the guy’s face until he comes back from work the next week.

He was in late – volunteering to direct the Christmas school play for _grades from one to six_ was the worst idea he’s ever had in his life, why did he even do it, they’re not even paying him extra for fuck’s sake – and so he comes back home around nine in the evening. The guy is still leaning on that same wall, smoking a cigarette, and then he looks up at Robb and –

Well, _damn_.

Robb always thought of himself as fairly heteroflexible – as in, he’s always been attracted to women but since he can appreciate a nice looking guy in a fairly theoretical way, he’s never ruled out the option of dating one. And as far as he’s concerned, his ideal of nice looking guy is – well. Pretty much _him_. Dark long-ish hair, eyes more or less that same shade (and the black eyeliner he put on looks really, really good on them), fairly regular traits, nice cheekbones and nose, lips that aren’t too full or thin – and when the guy raises an eyebrow at him and grins just a tiny bit Robb’s stomach maybe flips just a tiny bit, too. Christ, he’s gorgeous. Robb is sure that his cheeks might have just become as red as his hair.

He’s about to say hi or something before running into the building – he probably doesn’t need to make a fool out of himself when they haven’t even exchanged a word – when the guy’s eyes fall down on the cover of the book he was reading on the subway. They go narrow for a moment and then – then he sends him a fairly appreciative look.

“Nice,” he says after a moment. “I hope you can keep your face straight if you read that on the tube.”

Robb knows he’s going even redder in the face. Well, the guy has a point – _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_ is hardly what his school’s principal would deem appropriate reading on the tube. Or in an elementary school, but it’s not like Robb reads _that_ during his lunch break.

“I try,” he says, moving a bit closer. “But it’s pretty good so far.”

“Why, someone has nice taste then. I’m writing a paper on it.”

“For university?” Robb asks, and the guy suddenly looks at him weird – as if he had been expecting everything but that comment. Robb maybe gets why, but – well. Hooking is a living, he supposes, and the guy looks more or less his age. Maybe he’s having sex with people to pay for his studies, and what if he’s a bit behind – he’ll have his reasons. Anyway, Robb is hardly the kind of person who’d judge others for how they choose to put themselves through university.

“Sort of,” the guy says cautiously. “I mean, I had to drop out at sixteen and it took me a while to catch up on the A levels. But I did get into that community college five blocks from here.”

“Well, it is university.” Robb shrugs, and the guy is looking at him like he’s surprised about how in stride he’s taking it all over again. “Good luck with it then.”

“I should hope,” the guy says, “the local library is kind of shitty and clearly they don’t have one of the textbooks I should have gotten when the semester started, but with how much they cost –”

“Wait, which one?”

The guy shrugs and says the title of one of Robb’s old textbooks – which he’s pretty sure he has upstairs, he hasn’t sold any of them yet.

“Huh. Well, excuse me a moment.”

He goes into the building and into his apartment – he doesn’t have to look long. It’s right there in the middle of the shelf he had reserved to his old university texts. Great.

He grabs it and walks back downstairs.

Then he goes up to the guy and hands it over. “You can have it on loan,” he says, and the guy’s mouth falls open in a fairly almost perfectly shaped _o_.

“Wait, what –”

“I had to take an English Lit exam and it was mandatory, but I really don’t need it these days. Really, you can have it.”

“… Seriously?”

“Seriously. I mean, I teach _elementary school history_ , I can do without it. And if I actually did need it – well, I live on the third floor, I can find you.”

The guy takes it cautiously, still looking at Robb as if he’s some kind of alien. “Mate, it’s not that I’m not grateful, but why would you even give a book worth fifty quid when you bought it to someone whose name you don’t even know? Never mind in my line of work.”

Robb shrugs. “Well, I don’t know about your line of work, but it’s – work, I guess. I’m not in the habit of judging people for how they choose to make ends meet. Other than that, I don’t really believe in making things harder for people who want to get an education. Also, I’m Robb.”

He holds out his hand. The guy looks at him for a moment, then he actually grins for real and damn it but he looks really handsome, and then shakes it.

“Theon,” he says, “and you should actually feel flattered, I usually never give my real name to strangers.”

Robb laughs and decides that he really likes this guy, line of work and everything.

\--

So maybe he spends the next few days saying hi to Theon on his way back upstairs if he’s there. Theon says it back and that’s actually nice – it’s not that Robb knows anyone around here, so it kind of makes him feel like less of a loner at least – and maybe a few times he sees Theon getting inside a car when he glances out of the window.

He also knows he has absolutely no right feeling envious of whoever’s driving a few times, but no one needs to know _that_.

One night at the beginning of the next week he says hi again as he heads for the door – he’s finished really late, thanks to a principal-teachers meeting just after the school play rehearsals.

“So, you finished _Lady Chatterley_?” Theon asks as he glances at the book Robb has in his hands now. Right. It’s a new one.

“Oh. Yeah, over the weekend.”

“Did you keep on liking it?”

“I loved it,” Robb admits truthfully. “I don’t know how I had no clue already of how it was going to end – I mean, with classics you get the ending spoiled most times while you’re in school, right? – so I was kind of expecting it to be the usual horribly sad Victorian ending, and instead…”

“I know. Sounded nice that for once they kind of got away with it. By the way, thanks for that textbook, it’s really being a lifesaver.”

“That’s really not a problem. So, how’s that paper coming together?”

“Well enough,” Theon replies, sounding maybe kind of proud. “It’s not due for a while, so I have time to polish it. By the way, is that _American Psycho_?”

“Uh, yeah. My little sister swears it’s the best book ever written, I figured I should try it out.”

“Does being around children for the entire day make you want to read shit that they couldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?”

Robb can’t help it – he laughs at that, and doesn’t even bother to keep it down.

“Maybe that’s part of it,” he admits, and then Theon excuses himself because he’s seeing a _regular_ driving his way and Robb gets into the house and up the stairs and wondering if he could get away with asking the guy out for coffee without looking like he has the wrong intentions.

Whichever wrong intentions can someone have in this situation, but he’s plenty sure that if you’re doing sex work for a living and trying to get through university at the same time you probably aren’t interested in relationships, and Robb is definitely not ever going to pay someone he wants to sleep with for that – the last thing he’d want would be for Theon to think that it was headed there all along.

He’s _never_ going to tell anyone he’s related to that he might be in the process of maybe falling for the hooker working on the corner next to his house.

\--

The next week, Theon kind of looks embarrassed when Robb waves at him, and then he clears his throat.

“Hey, uhm, I was wondering something? I know it’s probably inappropriate, but –”

“Ask away,” Robb interrupts before it can get awkward.

“Well, you said you teach history?”

“I do, sadly for me. You don’t want to read today’s tests.”

Theon snorts, then shakes his head. “Well, uh, we do have a history class. Contemporary history. And it has a paper due in ten days. Thing is – it was never my subject, and – there’s, uh, there’s this guy. He’s kind of a regular, in the sense that I only see him one week each month, but – he kinda buys my time for all of it and he pays fairly well – I mean, he’s more or less the reason I can afford rent. It’s not like I can get great loans, I’m lucky that I get some for the tuition. Anyway, I have to be out next week and I was wondering if you could, you know, give it a read and tell me if it’s really horrid or not before I hand it in?”

Robb would really like to know why you’d _buy someone for one week each month_ for sex – that sounds completely fishy – but that’s not his business.

“Sure,” he said, “it’d definitely be less terrible than my students’ tests, don’t you worry.”

“Really?”

“Really. Do you have a pen drive or –”

“Sort of, but I don’t actually have a computer, so I just print stuff out from the library. Here, that’s the last draft.”

He rummages inside his old but well-kept backpack and hands Robb a small manila folder. “It’s in there. If it’s terrible just tell me, I know it’s not my subject anyway.”

“I’m sure it can’t be that terrible. Anyway, uh, I guess, I hope your week is… profitable?” He grimaces as he says that, but he’s not sure he could have said _enjoyable_.

“That’s about the one good thing about it,” Theon snorts, and then he’s off turning the corner of the building and Robb goes back upstairs, makes himself tea and decides that his students can wait until the day after tomorrow for their test results, not that they care about that in the first place. He sits down on his nice new Ikea armchair and starts reading the paper.

Half an hour later, he’s correcting things here and there, but – well, it’s nowhere near as bad as Theon made it sound like. The point was supposed to be discussing the defeat of the Italian army during El Alamein, and while some bits could have been expanded more (Robb writes small suggestions in the margins) and some others look very rushed, overall it’s a fairly better than average paper – it’s very well-written, it doesn’t overreach, it has the right number of citations and it’s obviously not copy/pasted from Wikipedia, which is already a miracle in this day and age. He puts it back in the folder when he’s proofread it another two times, then starts looking through his students’ tests – the first one definitely cheated, and used his phone, because the first question looks definitely copied from Wikipedia – and tries not to think about how Theon had sounded so sure that his own paper wasn’t any good at all.

\--

One week later, Theon is at the corner again – Robb notices that he has bags under his eyes and that he’s kind of favoring his right side and that he’s not wearing any of the usual makeup, but he doesn’t mention that even if he’s itching to.

Instead, he brings out the manila folder and hands it back.

“You know,” he says, “you shouldn’t put yourself down that much.”

“What?”

“You spoke about this as if it was terrible, but – it was fairly well researched, you can write and you didn’t just copy it from Wikipedia like half of my fifth graders do and like half of my uni class used to. There are a few things that can be improved – I noted them – but it’s good. And it’s obvious you put effort in it.”

“… You’re serious.”

“I’m perfectly serious. Why?”

Theon shakes his head as he takes back the folder. “It’s – nothing, really. It’s just that when I was in school I kind of wasted a lot of time and – I just want to do it the right way now.”

“Well, you’re doing great,” Robb says, entirely meaning it, and then someone honks from the other side of the road.

“Right. That’d be another regular. Well, thank you. I owe you one,” Theon says, and then he stuffs the folder in his backpack and goes towards the car.

Robb watches him go and heads back home.

\--

Six days later, Theon isn’t slightly limping anymore and he looks fairly more like usual than on the day he came back from his week with the _regular_.

He also looks entirely too happy to see him.

“Well, I owe you two.”

“Two?”

“That paper you looked at. It was a fifty-something. And in high school I barely scraped by in history, so – thanks again.”

“It was nothing. But hey, congratulations. And what about the one on Lawrence?”

“Oh, that’s – for the end of the term. You know, the one worth half your grade.”

“So wait, you’re going for an English Lit degree?”

“Yeah. If everything goes according to plan.” And the thing is – he looks so very delighted at the prospect, Robb thinks it’s a pity that half of his students don’t have half of the man’s enthusiasm.

“Let me know how it works out then,” he says, and Theon raises a hand towards him before heading to the car which just pulled up the corner.

\--

It’s early November when he walks inside the elevator and finds himself face to face with the lady who lives on the floor below his – she’s named Selyse Florent, or so he remembers from the last tenants’ meeting. He thinks she has to be divorced or something because she keeps on talking about her former husband as if he’s one of the incarnations of Satan, and she’s looking at him with some sort of disapproval. 

“I don’t understand it,” she says as they ride up to the sixth floor. Sadly the elevator is old and slow.

“Excuse me, what?”

“You seem like such a nice, respectable young man. Why would you even give the time of your day to – to that kid on the corner?”

Ah, shit, obviously someone noticed. Probably because she spends most of her time, when she’s in the house, looking at who comes in and out.

“You would be surprised,” he finally says, thinking about how happy Theon had looked when talking about his good history grades and about how much work had been put into the one paper he read. “Not everyone in that line of work is a criminal,” he finishes lamely.

“I never said he was a criminal. It’s just a pity that such a nice neighborhood should be tarnished like that. What should I even tell my poor daughter when she asks me what does _that young man on the corner_ do in life?”

“Earn a living,” Robb says as the lift doors opens. “Surely he doesn’t spend his time watching his neighbors from the living room window. Excuse me,” he concludes, pressing the seventh floor button.

She looked livid, but who even gives a fuck. Never mind that Robb knows her daughter. Never mind that she goes to the school he teaches at, just not the same class; he’s seen the poor kid actually talk to Theon at times, and she seems to be perfectly aware of what he does in life and she doesn’t seem to be judging him – she probably knows more than her mom on the matter anyway.

\--

“Did you major in middle ages history?” Theon asks him the next day.

“Sorry, what?”

“I mean, considering the knight in shining armor thing you might have going for you…” he starts, but he sounds amused more than anything else.

“I have _what_?”

“Shireen came down to tell me that you royally pissed her mom off defending my _line of work_ to her face in the elevator and that she’s been talking about how terrible you are all day. Just someone with knight in shining armor tendencies would risk having that woman against them at the tenants’ meeting for the likes of me.”

Robb snorts, unable to keep it in. “Well, sorry but she deserved it. I mean, she’s living off her husband’s child support money while gossiping about everyone else in this building and – listen, I don’t know why you decided that _this_ was the best way to make ends meet but – you’re doing that while getting an education and I guess that you’re not getting any support while you’re at it. Sorry if I think you deserve someone sticking up for you.”

And at that Theon looks actually moved for some reason. He shakes his head a couple of times, visibly swallows and then –

“Guess it’s better late than never,” he finally says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. And – well, damn it, would it kill you to talk about it over coffee? My treat.”

For a moment Robb is so floored by the proposal that he doesn’t even register it – not when he has been trying to come up of a way to ask Theon out for coffee himself for a while – but then he’s quick to nod before Theon gets the wrong idea.

“Sure,” he says. “Sure thing.”

And – shit, the small grin Theon sends his way? Robb is way over in his head.

They go to the Starbucks around the corner – Theon insists to buy still and comes back with a couple of pumpkin spice lattes.

Then he sits down, takes a sip and looks back up at him.

“See,” he says, “the thing is – let’s say my family was terrible. I mean. My mom and my sister weren’t, but my dad and my brothers? There’s a reason why I’m where I am now. I told you I dropped out at sixteen, right?”

“You did.”

“Well, it was because both my brothers managed to get themselves arrested and someone had to work other than my sister. But – the thing is, she gave some of her pay for house expenses and refused to hand over the rest, wasn’t she smart, and she left home the year after she turned eighteen. My dad used to have this small business, he tried to cheat on paying taxes and what he got for it was that he had to settle and sell everything. If he hadn’t I think they’d have just sent him to pay my brothers some company. Whatever – he hasn’t been able to hold a job more than three months since then because he always pisses off his boss and he’s _too good for most of those menial suckers_. Yeah, figures. So – I spent some five years bartending with all the money going for house expenses, never mind that it wasn’t even legal to let me do it when I was sixteen.” He stops, drinks some more. “Then two things happened. As in, my mom died and my sister paid for the funeral, because somehow the _house expenses_ money was barely enough to pay the bills. At that point – my dad got worse, I still had to hand him over most of my money and that went on for a few months. Which weren’t exactly tension-free. And then my dad caught me fooling around with the uni student living next door.”

“I imagine it wasn’t a female uni student.”

“Indeed. So he went and kicked me out. Just like that – after all my brothers would be released soon and they’d _take care of things_. How, I have no fucking clue. So – well, I ended up in a homeless shelter. That was when my former boss decided I couldn’t work for him – as in, it was fine when I was sixteen and couldn’t even drink, but that? Obviously he couldn’t keep me if I didn’t have a real address anymore.” Theon snorts and drinks some more – Robb does too, even if he doesn’t feel that thirsty at this point.

“So, I was twenty-one, without a job and living in a homeless shelter. And you wouldn’t know how much sex pays in that situation. I just did some math and – well, it had to be just to get out of there. But – I made enough money to rent a studio apartment not far from here in two months. If you’re careful and do it the right way you can manage fairly well.”

“Can I ask what you mean by _the right way_ or is that… I don’t know, rude?”

Theon laughs and shakes his head. “As if. It’s not really rocket science. Get paid half up front, always use protection, don’t kiss the client lest they think you actually, you know, like them, and don’t let them rob you just because you might look desperate. And take a day off once each week like everyone with a real job. And – thing is, maybe I could try to actually look for a real one these days, but it still pays more than the minimum wage work I’d find, all things considered. Until it pays the bills I’m not really sure I want to risk it, you know.”

“Well,” Robb answers, “as long as no one else is forcing you into it I don’t see how it’s other people’s business. I’m curious, though. Why English Lit?”

“Why, you thought I was more of an engineering person?”

“Everyone tells _me_ I don’t look like someone with a history degree for some reason, I don’t think people look like their degrees.”

“Point taken.” He shrugs. “It’s a fairly dumb reason though. I mean. It’s not anything special, it’s mostly that when I was in school I used to be on my own most of the time and my mom owned a lot of novels. At some point you learn to like reading. It’s like, the most cliché reason anyone could have to get an English Lit degree.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not a good one,” Robb says, and Theon half-chokes on his coffee.

“And by the way, I didn’t write my thesis on the Middle Ages. It was about the Polish army during World War Two. You can believe me when I say your paper was pretty good.”

“Okay, I’ll stop assuming it was shit. That still was knight in shining armor of you, though.”

“Come on, I’ve done more than that for people I wasn’t half as friendly with in high school.”

Theon stares at him for a moment, as if the concept of the two of them being _friends_ hadn’t been contemplated until now, but then he sends a small grin Robb’s way again.

“Fine, however you want it,” he says, but his cheeks are flushing and he looks somewhat happy about it and Robb decides that being friends is entirely good enough as far as he’s concerned.

\--

A couple of days later, Theon comes up to him asking if he’d have problems reading another couple of papers due next week. Robb says of course and gives them back telling him that he really should stop assuming that his work is _mediocre_ when it’s about subjects that aren’t technically his chosen one – one of the papers is for a French Lit class and the other is some kind of history of philosophy introduction and while there’s nothing groundbreaking in either, they’re not bad whatsoever.

“I mean,” Robb tells him wondering how the heck can Theon stand the late November weather just in his thin leather jacket, “if they just want to see if you can do your research, structure an argument, write in decent English and quote others properly, which is what they want you to do with this kind of thing anyway, then you really should stop worrying that much. Fine, you didn’t find out anything groundbreaking about Baudelaire’s influence on European poetry but that’s not what you’re supposed to do in the first place.”

“ _Hilarious_ , Robb, but thanks,” Theon says, taking the folder back. “But thanks. I needed some good news.”

“What, is there a problem?”

Theon shrugs. “Not really. It’s just that – you know. That regular who pays for an entire week.”

“Yes?”

“It’s usually the second or third of the month. But since the next one is December and there are festivities he’s insisting to do it on the first.”

“Well, you don’t _have_ to do it?”

Theon shrugs. “Not in theory, but – he pays pretty damned well and my landlord knows that I don’t have a normal job, so the moment I fall behind there might be issues. I just didn’t feel like doing it without another three weeks in between, but whatever, I guess I can manage.”

“Doing _what_ , if I can ask?”

Theon shrugs again. “Let’s say that the guy has… peculiar tastes that he can’t satisfy with normal people and that it can get intense in a bad way. But he pays well and I can’t afford to lose the income, and it’s still nothing that will kill me. I can deal with it. Anyway, thanks for these. Do you think you could have a look at the Lawrence one, too, when I’m done? I really don’t want to fuck that one up.”

“Just hand it over when it’s ready,” Robb replies. “See you next week, I guess?”

“Sure,” Theon says, “it’s a date.”

Then he winks at him and heads towards his usual corner, and Robb can already see a car approaching.

He goes up the stairs and tries not to think about what _getting intense in a bad way_ can mean.

\--

They have that conversation on a Friday.

On the next one, Robb is going home, and he’s kind of planning to buy the man a coffee if he’s around especially if he’s just back from his week of depravity with the unnamed client – Robb also could do with unloading his frustrations about the _A Christmas Carol_ school play, a subject Theon has found vastly hilarious the few times Robb brought it up during their conversations on the streetwalk –, and then Jon calls him while he’s leaving the school and heading for the tube.

“Hey,” he asks, “what’s up?”

Jon sighs. “Bran found a cat on the side of the road. A very pregnant cat. Who had been presumably left there to freeze to death. Of course he brought her home, not that anyone begrudged him that, but – now there are, like, eight kittens around the house.”

“Eight?”

“I know. Your mom is kind of desperate because she knows she won’t ever be able to resist the _can’t we keep them_ that came from like, everyone under fifteen _and_ Sansa, but she wanted to know if you could take in one or two of them or if you knew anyone who might? Because nine cats is way too much. Especially considering that there are already three dogs around.”

Right. Shaggydog, Summer and Nymeria – all of them got a dog when they were young, at some point, but Robb’s, Jon’s and Sansa’s died of old age. Their siblings’ are very much alive, though.

“Well, I have an empty house. I guess I can take two.”

Of course he has to go now, and so he takes the tube in the opposite direction – he comes back home late in the evening, carrying a cage with the two kittens that were carefully selected for him by his siblings. Who actually discussed the matter for about one hour before giving him a light gray one – _because it’s the same color as Grey Wind_ , Sansa had declared, and a black one whose color was entirely too similar to Shaggydog’s. According to Rickon, at least – Robb hadn’t dared asking anything about the reasoning.

So he’s dead tired when he arrives back home with the cage and an entirely too heavy bag of cat supplies, and Theon’s nowhere to be seen. But well, it’s eleven in the evening. It’s probably working hours as far as he’s concerned.

Robb goes back home and worries about getting the kittens settled in, and tries not to worry.

\--

Theon isn’t there the next day. Or the next either. Robb just hopes that he’s taking some rest and on Monday he ends up cornering Shireen – good thing she goes to the school he teaches at – and gives her his keys, asking her if she can look after the kittens while he’s at the school play rehearsal. She’s delighted to, never mind that _her mom is always out in the afternoons so she won’t know_. She sounds sarcastic enough that Robb just rolls his eyes in agreement and tells her not to spoil them too much and no, he still hasn’t given them names, he’ll think about it.

When he comes back home, the kittens are thriving and Theon’s nowhere to be seen again.

He’s not going to tell anyone that he spends half an hour petting kittens to calm down – surely he’s just taking a break and catching up with school work and Robb is overreacting.

\--

On Friday night, he’s cursing himself for not having ever asked Theon his surname – he hardly can try to look for him when he just has his first name and not even his home address. Sure, he could go to the community college, he knows where it is, but he doubts they’d give _him_ personal information just because he asked.

Never mind that the kid playing the ghost of Christmas present had to drop out of the play and now he really hopes someone else in the class somehow knows the part because otherwise it’s going to be hilarious finding a substitute who has to learn it from scratch in two weeks’ time. He’s trying to not think about Theon as he tries to decide which of the kids who aren’t acting could manage it if it came to that when there’s a knock on the door – he goes to answer.

“Shireen?” He’s fairly surprised to see her there – it’s late, at least for a nine year-old. And if her mother is around –

“I’m not sneaking out. I was at Dad’s this week, he just dropped me off and I came straight up here. Listen, I think you really wanna go downstairs.”

“What?”

“I _told_ him to come up but he wouldn’t. Go down,” she says, and then she hurries towards the staircase and presumably back home before her mother starts worrying.

Robb doesn’t have that many doubts about who _he_ is – he grabs his coat and keys and runs downstairs, and –

“Damn, she really did call you,” Theon croaks from the corner, where he’s sitting instead of standing as usual, and –

“What the fuck happened?” Robb blurts – what else can he even say when Theon’s wearing clothes that would be good for a summer evening (the jacket is jeans, not even leather), is sporting a purple eye, a split lip and a bruise on the side of his face that makes Robb want to wince just looking at it, has two backpacks next to him when usually he can’t even see where he keeps his wallet –

And when his shoulder is hanging in a fairly weird way?

“A lot of things. If I say that my regular was more of a psychopath that I had assumed does that cover it?”

“Good thing that you want to joke about it, but I don’t need a medicine degree to see that you have a fucking dislocated shoulder. You need a hospital.”

“Yeah, _no_.”

“Your shoulder –”

“The first places that asshole is going to look for me in are going to be hospitals. _No_.”

And – thing is, Theon looks kind of scared out of his mind as he says it, and Robb is hardly going to press it. Also – what’s worrying is that he’s not even moving or attempting to go anywhere else.

He looks upwards – the lights in Selyse Florent’s apartment are on. She’s probably watching them.

“I did get a first aid course when I went to university. It was for extra credits. Anyway, I could probably set that shoulder for you if it’s just dislocated. And you can’t stay here freezing to death. Come on, let’s go upstairs.”

Theon doesn’t move. “Wait, what, you meant – to your place?”

“Well, I should hope not in Selyse Florent’s. Do you need help getting up?”

“Uh. No, thanks.” 

But Robb can see him looking at the backpacks as if he entirely isn’t looking forward to dragging them up, so he picks them up instead before Theon can protest and opens the door – Selyse can disapprove as much as she likes.

Neither of them says a thing as they head for Robb’s flat – Robb opens the door and drops the bags inside, and Theon follows him inside after a moment of hesitation. He looks completely out of his element, but Robb doesn’t fail to notice that the moment he’s in, and out of the biting cold, he seems relieved – he’s not surprised at all.

“Right,” he says, “we should probably do that in the bathroom. This way.”

Theon follows him wordlessly, leaving the jacket behind – when he sits down on the toilet seat, Robb goes for the edge of the tub on the side of the dislocated shoulder.

And –

What. He’s wearing a thin t-shirt only, and Robb is pretty sure that other than the bite marks all over his collarbone there are whip marks showing up on his back. When he helps Theon out of the t-shirt to have better access to his shoulder, there’s no doubt about that. And they’re fairly fresh.

“Sorry for the lack of Chanel number five,” Theon mutters, and yeah, right, he’s also in dire need of a shower, but that’s the least.

“That’s not even what’s worrying me right now.” He touches the area around Theon’s shoulder lightly – Theon flinches at it, but he tries not to. It’s plenty obvious.

At least, after a bit of prodding, he’s plenty sure he just needs to set it back.

“Fine. On my three. One, two –”

He pulls without warning.

“ _Shit_ ,” Theon says after screaming out, “I fell for the oldest fucking trick in the book. Damn it, it hurts. Less so, though. Thanks, I’ll just–”

“If you were about to say _be on my way_ , you can forget that. Especially because I doubt you’d be going home.”

Theon bites down on his lip – yeah, right, as if.

“Listen, I’d say how about you take a shower, but maybe we should put some ice on that swelling first. Let’s say that I go get you some along with a cup of tea, you tell me what happened and then you can take a shower?”

“Robb –”

“ _Theon_. I’m getting the ice.”

Theon doesn’t object and follows him to the kitchen – one of the kittens is lying on the table. How did it even get there?

“Since when do you have cats?”

“Since my siblings dumped two on me this week. It’s been so busy I didn’t even find them names yet. Here you go.”

He hands Theon two ice packs, then he puts on the kettle. Then he realizes that maybe he might have pushed too much.

“You know, you don’t have to tell me what happened,” he says as he turns on the gas. “If you just want to get the tea –”

“It’s not that I want to _talk_ about it, but – it’s just – well, I’m kind of fucked right now, and I don’t think I know anyone else who’d hear it out. It’s not even that long of a story. I mean. I told you that my landlord is a fairly strict person if he knows your job isn’t exactly respectable.”

“You did.”

“As in, he said he’d kick me out if I missed a payment. And I managed to be on time it for a good year, sadly also because of the money I got in that one week. Except that this one month I missed the window because my psychopath client didn’t let me go at the end of the week we had agreed on and kept me locked in the damned house.”

“He did what?”

“Exactly what I said. Also our deal was that he could go hard on me as long as the marks would be gone by the time the week was over. Well, let’s say that in the last five days he didn’t give much of a shit about that.”

“Yeah, I’m looking at your back. Never mind the dislocated shoulder.”

Theon doesn’t contradict him and starts idly petting the cat with the hand he’s not using to hold up the ice pack – Robb won’t tell him not to.

“If only it was everything to it,” he says, but then he shakes his head and resolutely doesn’t look at Robb as the water boils. “Anyway, I managed to get out. It involved climbing out of the window on a second floor. Without the money he owed me, of course, but – I managed to get to my place, where of course the landlord took a look at my face and just handed me the bags in the entrance. Apparently since I missed the window he figures he could just pack everything and throw me out.”

“Wait, what?”

“I didn’t exactly have a legally binding contract in my favor.” Theon lets out a frustrated breath. “At that point – well, it wasn’t too far from here. I just – came and dropped down at the corner. Figured I’d see if you were in, and then I realized I didn’t know your surname and – I mean, the more time passed the more it seemed like a dumbass idea, you know. Then Shireen showed up and – yeah. That’s it.”

“Dumbass idea, why?”

Theon shrugs. “Well, we might be friendly, but that’s one thing, another is finding _me_ on your doorstep with all my earthly possessions in two bags.”

Robb wants to ask, _you really have shit luck with people, don’t you_ , and instead he pours the hot water into his teapot after not so unconsciously putting in it the priciest tea he has in the house.

“So you were just going to freeze to death?”

Theon snorts and when Robb turns to put the kettle on the table he looks like someone who’s just – completely thrown in the towel.

“Might as well. If I don’t have a place I can’t _work_ , as if I can even have sex with people looking like this. And if I can’t do that I can’t even attend classes – it was exactly the kind of living where if something goes wrong the entire house of cards falls down.” He’s so bitter Robb almost flinches at it, but he can believe it – after all, he did have all his plan figured out, didn’t he? “Never mind that with my previous work experience I guess having a degree wouldn’t have helped with getting a _respectable_ job, but what do I know.”

Robb grabs a couple of mugs and tries to figure out how to propose what he has been thinking for the last ten minutes or so – in the end, he figures he should just go for it and hope it doesn’t sound as if he’s looking for a charity case, which he figures is what Theon might assume.

“Humor me a minute,” he says as he pours the tea and pushes his old Star Wars tea mug towards Theon. “But what if you’re being way too fatalist about this?”

“I think I’m just being realistic.”

“I’m not so sure. Let’s say that I have a guest room and that I wasn’t going to throw you out of the house the moment you were done drinking that tea. Let’s also say I might need someone to look after the cats at least until Christmas. Let’s also say I don’t believe in being an ass to your _friends_ when they might need a hand.”

Theon’s hand stops halfway in midair – the mug shakes for a moment, but he keeps his hold on it.

“Did you just say that –”

“You could take that room, go to class when you have it and when you don’t – well, as I said, someone should look after the cats. Also I’m pretty sure my old desktop is boxed somewhere, I can try to find it and you can use it instead of going to the library. I mean, you paid for the entire school year at the beginning, right? So you don’t exactly need to, well, work. You can think about it when your shoulder isn’t swelling like that.”

Theon takes a fairly long sip of tea before putting the mug back down on the table. He’s trying not to pay attention to the black kitten nudging at his wrist and Robb can’t help thinking it’s fairly endearing.

“Never mind that it sounds fairly too good to be true, but – _why_? I mean, you could have anyone else in the building watching the cats. And that’s about the one thing you’re gaining. Never mind that from what I can guess half of your neighbors wouldn’t appreciate. Also aren’t you renting?”

“Well, I don’t give a shit about my neighbors and my landlord is a fairly laid back person and I’m sure that if I explain him the situation he won’t care as long as _I_ keep on paying rent.” Robb has talked to Oberyn Martell long enough to be fairly sure of that. “And other than that – why not? Maybe I think that everyone deserves a chance to do what they want with their life. Seemed to me like you had it figured out, so I wasn’t going to offer advice about it, but you shouldn’t give it up unless you really have to. And it’s not as if I’m condemning myself to a lifetime of sharing my house with someone I don’t like.”

At that Theon does laugh for real, even if he’s not looking up at him.

“Shit, this is just – I wasn’t – I mean, that wasn’t what –”

“I know you weren’t fishing for it. I’m offering, you know.”

“I do, but – that’s not even all of it.” He drinks some more tea with the hand not holding up the ice pack. “It’s just that – fuck, this is so embarrassing.”

“You can go ahead and say it, I won’t rat you out.”

“Hilarious. Well, okay, I’ve been _managing_ since I was sixteen and no one else ever bothered to lend me a hand once, I don’t know how to react.”

Robb might have been suspecting that answer, which is why he just takes a sip from his own cup and doesn’t address that specifically. “How about you say yes to it and ask me where can you find the guest room?”

Theon starts choking on the tea at that, which had kind of been the reaction Robb was hoping for.

“Has anyone ever told you that you can be an asshole if you want to? But okay, fine, I’ll take the offer, and _where is the guest room_ , my lord?”

Robb rolls his eyes. “The door in front of the bathroom. If you think you can handle a shower with that shoulder you’re welcome to it. Also, if you want some aloe rubbed on your back, just ask.”

Theon winces visibly – that shit must hurt. “Another day I’d have said that I was fine, but – if I don’t fall asleep in the shower I guess why not. Thank you, I just –”

“No need, just go when you think you’re good.”

Theon does when he finishes his tea – Robb goes in before and puts out towels and a spare pair of his pajamas just in case, then when he hears the shower running he gets the guest room bed ready and finds that aloe cream Sansa gave him as a housewarming gift. He doesn’t have to wait long – Theon walks in the room after having taken what seems like a fairly perfunctory wash, but considering that his shoulder still looks on fire Robb doubts he was feeling much up for moving it around.

“If that offer’s still valid –” He starts, obviously looking embarrassed.

“Sure it is. Sit here, I’ll try to go easy on you.”

“I doubt it’s going to hurt any less, just go for it.”

Robb spends the next ten minutes quenching the question that he kind of wants to ask – _can’t you press charges against this guy_ – because the thing is, the four marks he’s rubbing cream against are bad. Obviously not infected, but when they scar they’re going to look fairly ugly for a long time, and who even does that kind of thing to someone else? He has a feeling that it’s not the kind of whip you find in sex shops.

Still, he doesn’t say anything and he empties a quarter of the cream tube before he decides that it’s the most he can do for the moment.

“Done,” he says, “I’d still sleep on your front if I were you.”

“Good advice if I ever heard some,” Theon mutters, sounding still fairly pained.

“Well, I guess we can discuss things in depth tomorrow, but if you want to catch some sleep I’ll just leave you to it. 

“I guess I am kind of beat. Thanks again, I really don’t know –”

“Don’t sweat it, it’s okay. See you tomorrow morning then.”

Theon gives him a nod and Robb closes the door, breathing out and really wishing Theon had at least mentioned pressing charges.

He goes to feed the kittens before going to bed, makes sure they’re settled and then turns in as well – except that two hours later he’s woken up by a scream on the other side of the wall – right. It’s in common with the guest room.

For a moment he thinks he should go check on Theon, but then he wonders, _what if it’s the last thing he wants considering also that he’s barely coming to terms with me offering him a place to sleep_ , and so he kills his instinct to just go out and see what’s going on and turns on his side. It makes him feel like a horrible person inside out and when he goes back to sleep, it’s a long time later.

He drags himself out of bed at ten thirty, good thing it’s a Saturday, figuring that he’ll make himself some coffee and hoping that he hasn’t overslept too much, and then he walks into his kitchen.

“Have I suddenly fell into that Disney movie where the fairytale princess ended up in the real world?”

Which is probably a fairly dumb thing to say, and he only saw that movie because Sansa used to be obsessed with it, but – seriously. He’s been living here two months, fine, but his kitchen has never been this clean. Has he always used the cleaning products wrong? Maybe. Anyway, said kitchen is pretty much sparkling, there’s eggs and bacon in a couple of pans – he can see them through the transparent covers, so they’re being kept warm. There’s coffee ready on the counter and Theon’s sitting at the table writing down something on an old notebook with both kittens perched on his leg. _Excuse him_ if seeing this first thing in the morning without his usual caffeine intake generates that kind of dumb comment.

Theon just laughs, which is probably a good reaction all things considered.

“Well, that’s the first time in my life when something I did got compared to a fucking Disney movie, I guess it can’t be that bad. Anyway, no. I just couldn’t really sleep and so I got up at six, saw that your kitchen was kind of a mess and I figured I’d at least repay you for the favor if I tidied it up and made you breakfast. You can eat it, it’s not poisonous.”

“I wasn’t stalling because I thought it was poisonous,” Robb mutters before doing it – he’s hungry and he needs coffee and he’s not going to pass on it, especially since he usually never bothers cooking anything. He just gets cereal – it’s quicker and he’s terrible at cooking anyway.

“This is so _not_ poisonous,” he manages to say after wolfing down half of it.

“Well, if I wanted to eat something halfway decent I had to learn,” Theon shrugs, “but good to know it’s palatable.”

“Palatable is an understatement.” Robb is fairly sure he’s not moaning around the last bacon strip just because he has some semblance of self-control.

Theon lets out a snort again, good thing he’s looking fairly more in good spirits than yesterday evening.

Except that then his face turns serious a moment later. “Right. Guess we should talk – details? I mean, listen, I’d really feel terrible just being here and looking after the cats, not when you weren’t looking for fairly messed up roommates. I do have some money left over, I could pay half of the rent for a couple months or –”

Robb shakes his head, drinks some of his coffee and sits down at the table. “Listen, if it makes you feel uncomfortable – fine, I might have a proposition. If you don’t find it demeaning or whatever.”

“Robb, I used to pay my bills by having sex with people, I don’t know what I could find demeaning.”

“Right. Well, I guess you’ve seen that I’m shit at keeping the place tidy or putting half a meal together.”

“That’s fine, you make up for it in other departments.”

“Why, _thank you_ , but anyway, I mean, if you want to pay for groceries, worry about not letting either of us starve and keep the place from becoming a complete mess until you get your bearings back together that’s plenty enough for me.”

“That’s – that’s fairly better. And don’t worry, if you think that is demeaning – I’ve _experienced_ demeaning. It’s nothing. Okay, that’s a deal. If you’re sure.”

“I proposed, didn’t I?”

“Guess you did,” Theon says quietly.

Then he clears his throat. “And I kind of might have a favor to ask you already. But just if you want, I mean, I could do it myself if –”

“Spill. What’s the matter?”

Theon shrugs and hands him over the notebook. “That’s the last half of the Lady Chatterley paper. I finished writing it out earlier since I couldn’t sleep, I figured I’d just type it later, except that before when I was doing my magic around the kitchen I realized that it’d probably make my shoulder start swelling all over again. So – if you don’t mind – but if you have better plans I can just do it.”

“Man, the only other plans I had were calling a bunch of overprotective parents to ask if their kids might want to cover for one who bailed out of the Christmas play, but after I’m done with that? Reading anything suited only for people over the age of fourteen is a fairly enchanting prospect. Damn, I really liked that job more at the beginning.”

“Why, was there any difference?”

“I was younger and I hadn’t realized how bad parents can get. Well, let me do this and then I can type that down.”

“Thanks. Really, I’d do it myself but I have two days to turn it in –”

“It’s okay, really. Well, let’s get this over with.”

Except that he gets all refuses from everyone already involved in the production.

Damn it. At the last refusal, he groans out loud before putting down the phone.

“No candidates?”

“No. Fine, I made sure that I didn’t put to acting the ones who hated it and were doing it just because they were pressured, but it means that everyone who wants to act is already cast.”

“How about you ask Shireen? I mean, she goes to your school or what? She’s smart, she could probably learn the lines in two days.”

Which – well, it’s a perfectly great idea, except that Robb has to bypass her mother. Well, he can see to it later when she goes out for tea as she always does on Saturday afternoon.

“Right. I’ll go downstairs later to check if she might want to – meanwhile hand over that paper and your pen drive, I’ll type it up.”

Theon does, then says he’ll see if he can take a nap or something to catch up on sleep and leaves the room – Robb has this inkling that he won’t sleep at all, but if Theon doesn’t want to be there when he types the paper down he has his reasons.

He puts the pen drive in, finds the document – it’s all school-related files from what he can see – opens it and starts reading.

\--

Two hours later, he thinks he knows why Theon might not have wanted to be there while he was reading it. Never mind being worried that Robb might be judging his work or something like that, the thing is that – it actually _was_ personal.

From what Robb gathered the assignment was to write and argument some individual opinion about whichever aspect of the novel the student wished – Theon went for the censorship surrounding it, which one would have thought a fairly safe-from-personal-statements subject.

Instead, after a very well structured introduction describing the history of said censorship, along with a fairly sarcastic paragraph about the book being banned from sales in certain Australian stores just a few years before now, which had Robb snickering throughout, the essay comes to the viral question _why was it censored until the sixties in the UK and why did there have to be a trial to publish it in its integrity_.

And –

Robb is stuck on the paragraph he has just typed – he has another three to go or four, he should just keep on doing it and then he could revise the part that he added to the original file.

But instead he’s just re-reading that damned paragraph to hell and back.

_One might ask themselves _what_ is that institutions might find outrageous in such a book these days. Banning it in 2009 isn’t the same thing as banning it in the forties or the fifties. These days, the language used sounds tame in comparison to works that are fairly mainstream for our standards. There is hardly a scandalous factor in depicting a sexual clandestine relationship between a man and a woman – and the social class-related factor is hardly relevant in modern times, as well. What is that makes it somehow worse than mainstream erotic fiction? At this point, of course, everything is speculation. Still, could it be that not only the two lovers not only do more or less get away with it, but also find some kind of happiness with each other and aren’t punished by the narrative for having chosen to pursue a relationship that was also sexually fulfilling for both? Obviously one can’t be sure either way – certainly, if we were to ask the people in charge of banning such a book, they’d answer it’s inappropriate or that the language is too crude, but can this really be valid in the society where _Fifty Shades of Gray_ is considered mainstream, too? I personally think it has more to do with how the protagonists are, as far as the narrative is concerned, rewarded for their behavior more than punished. The problem isn’t that the content is inappropriate, or that they are depicted engaging in adultery. It’s that the adultery in question make them happy and fulfilled people, and in the end pursuing their relationship is seen by the author as something admirable rather than shameful. And the question at this point becomes: why would society be still this scared of showing that sometimes your life can be better for embracing your sexuality and that doing something that we find morally reproachable to someone who doesn’t value you as a sexual being might not be inherently be wrong? The lovers aren’t the tragic heroes of the story. They are just the heroes, period, and heroes who do, in fact, win. After all, Constance cheats on her husband, who doesn’t see her for who she really is, with someone from a lower class that she shouldn’t have looked at twice. Mellors does the same and on top of that we could also add that not only he’s cheating on his estranged wife, he’s cheating on her with someone far higher than he stands in society. They both find happiness, sexual and not, in that relationship. They aren’t miserable for it, they enjoy each other, and it’s not written as something either of them should feel ashamed of, so much that in the end they do choose to be together, without caring for societal norms, and they aren’t punished for it. Is this something really so bad that we should go as far as censoring it? _

Maybe Robb is reading too much into it, but it sounds suspiciously like _is enjoying sex regardless of the circumstances such a bad thing that we should censor it,_ which in itself sounds suspiciously like _should we assume that it’s such a bad thing that people paid to do it should be looked down upon_. And that would be fairly personal, never mind that he agrees. He swallows, finishes typing down the rest and then goes through it leaving comments and editing here and there, and when he’s done it’s almost lunch time and he’s not even sure he feels that hungry. He stands up and knocks on the guest room’s door.

“You can get in,” Theon says. When Robb does come in, he’s sitting cross-legged on the bed reading some other textbook which gets promptly thrown to the side.

“You know,” Robb tells him, “that’s not going to kill your grade if you ask me. If you want to look at the edits, the laptop’s in the living room. You can print it if you want, the printer’s linked to it. And for what it’s worth, I think you have a point or ten.”

“Wait, about –”

“About people still needing to understand that it’s fine to want someone to fulfill your sexual needs in a relationship and that there’s nothing horrible about it, yes. Or that it shouldn’t be shameful to pay for it or provide that service.”

“I – I never wrote that.”

“But you said it, or am I wrong?”

Theon stares at him for a handful of seconds before shaking his head slowly. “No, you’re right. Well, hopefully my professor won’t think I’m full of shit. And I’m cooking lunch after looking it over.”

“Well, it’s not as if it’s an interpretation pulled out of your ass, you’ll do fine. And you still have a swollen shoulder, don’t bother. I’ll order some Chinese in. You can edit your paper while I try corrupting Shireen into being in my play.”

At that Theon laughs, and it’s genuine at least, and Robb kind of wants to hug him but he’s not sure it’d be welcome, looking at the body language, and so he forces himself not to go for it and calls the nearest take-away. They eat it while discussing plot points of _Lady Chatterley_ that are carefully not related to the paper, and then Robb leaves him to edit while he heads downstairs.

Turns out that as he had suspected Selyse is out, so at least Robb doesn’t have to deal with her.

“Hey,” he asks Shireen, “do you think you might want to find yourself something to do in the afternoon until Christmas?”

“As in?” She asks, sounding slightly intrigued.

“The kid playing the ghost of Christmas Present dropped out. I need someone to learn the part quickly – it’s three showings on the twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second. Do you think you might want to do it?”

She gives him a fairly surprised look. “Wait, you want me to act in the Christmas play?”

“Why not?”

She points at the left side of her face – Robb never asked the details, but the left side of her face is covered in red scars that he always thought were because of a skin infection treated wrongly. and Robb shrugs. “So what? If anyone tries to complain I’m going to have their hide. If you don’t want to it’s another question.”

“No, actually – well, I kind of always wanted to try out, but – that. Also – my dad, I think he always wanted to work in theater but he couldn’t, so – it’s probably stupid, but –”

“I don’t really think it is. So, was that a yes?”

She looks up at him. “Where is the script?”

Robb wants to weep in happiness. He hands it over – good thing he had brought it with him. “See you on Monday, three PM. If you want an extra day to memorize it –”

“We’ll see, but I don’t think I’ll need it,” she grins shyly.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he says – she laughs at that and then tells him that she has a script to memorize, so he can leave.

Robb comes back home feeling like maybe this entire play business won’t end up being a complete bust – Theon is typing slowly with just his right hand while one of the kittens nuzzles at his left and Robb decides that it’s a damned lovely sight as far as he’s concerned.

\--

Throughout the next Monday, he decides that maybe having a real breakfast did help out with feeling slightly less tired throughout the day – he feels a lot more chipper than he usually is on a Monday morning. He kind of feels bad that Theon woke up at six in the morning just to put it together for him before going back to bed, but he’s not going to tell him not to if he wants it like that, and the play rehearsals go fairly better than usual. He glares at the first kid who had opened his mouth to say _anything_ the moment he announced who was going to be Tommen Baratheon’s substitute, Shireen actually had learned the part perfectly and she’s also pretty good at it, all things considered, so that was a success. When he comes back home, he’s in fairly better spirits than usual, and maybe the prospect of not being on his own helps – hey, he comes from a household of eight people, being suddenly on his own had felt downright weird.

“You know,” Theon tells him first thing, “you really are shit at grocery shopping.”

“What?”

“I didn’t exactly have time to check until now, but who only has eggs, bacon, cheese and bananas in their fridge?”

“Er, I barely cook,” Robb admits, putting down his backpack.

“I understood it. Anyway, I took care of that.”

The fridge is in fact completely stocked for the first time since Robb moved in. And dinner seems already done – it’s in the oven, but it’s obviously there just to keep it warm.

“Okay, I’ll just get off this coat and be right over.”

“Sure, I’ll be trying to keep the cats off dinner while you’re at it.”

Robb snorts and shrugs off his coat, goes to hang it, puts his backpack in the living room and comes back to the kitchen to find himself in front of a roasted chicken with stir-fried vegetables which would make his mom ask for the recipe instantly.

“Wow,” he says, “you really didn’t have to go out of your way that much. I’d have been fine with a sandwich.”

“I deduced that from your fridge,” Theon snorts. “And listen, I could say that since you’re letting me stay here also in exchange for making sure you eat something decent and so I’ll make sure I’ll be a damned good maid, and that’d be part of the truth. But the biggest part of it is that I actually _like_ eating well, so you’re getting exactly what I’d make for myself on my own. I never believed in surviving on sandwiches.”

Robb has to laugh at that, because – yeah, from what he’s seen of Theon up until now it totally makes sense, doesn’t it?

“Well, then _I_ lucked out with roommates because that looks delicious. Hey, if college doesn’t work out you could always try Masterchef.”

“Fuck you and eat, Stark, it’s better than your _sandwich_.”

It is, in fact, a lot better than his usual sandwich. He says it and Theon gloats quite openly and even if most of his face is still not a sight for sore eyes, and his cheek is still a color closer to burgundy than anything else, Robb can’t help thinking that it’s a really good look on him and that he’d like to see it a lot more often.

\--

The rest of the week goes by fairly well – Robb isn’t going to say out loud that this cohabitation thing is working out perfectly for the two of them and that after five days in the same space they seem to have developed a working routine for the both of them, but that’s exactly what’s happening. He thinks Theon is also perfectly aware of it, but neither of them has brought it out in the open. The play rehearsals are going well enough that he’s almost sure nothing too bad will happen on opening day as it’s usually bound to, and the only thing that really worries him is that he hears Theon waking up screaming every other night. He pretends he never hears it – he sees the way Theon looks worriedly at him in the mornings.

Then he comes home on Friday afternoon feeling like he could go straight to bed – other than rehearsals and the last test before the holidays, it was his reception hour day, and of course Selyse Baratheon showed up wanting to know if her daughter _really_ volunteered for the school play, and Robb stuck to the story he and Shireen agreed on hoping to fool her. She hadn’t looked particularly convinced, and when she muttered that _that girl will turn out just like her father_ without sounding particularly happy about it he had thought he might have guessed why the man never pursued his theater ambitions if they married fairly young. Anyway, in between everything he feels fairly drained and he figures he won’t skip on dinner just so that Theon doesn’t assume that he’s being rude, and then he walks in on Theon sitting at the empty kitchen table, the kittens perched on it, looking down at what Robb recognizes is his _Lady Chatterley_ paper with the face of someone who doesn’t have a clue of what to do with it.

“Hey,” he says, putting down the backpack, “how did it go?”

Theon swallows, says nothing and hands it over.

There’s a 78 stamped on top of the evaluation sheet – well, damn, they really must have liked it. Which doesn’t explain Theon’s completely blank expression. Robb reads the actual evaluation, but it’s all compliments – it’s the usual drivel, confirming that the writing is clear and on point, that the argument is valid, that it’s plain obvious that he understood what he’s talking about and that he raises a valid hypothesis as far as his chosen theme went. Robb puts it back on the table and sits down.

“Are you all right?” He asks, because Theon looks everything but.

“I don’t – I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just – I was doing this to prove myself I could get a damned education, because it’s not like I actually wanted to drop out when I did. But I thought I’d – do okay at most I guess. It’s not as if anyone ever told me I had talent at anything other than blowing people.” That sounds as bitter as it should, and Theon winces the moment he says it, but then he goes on. “And now – that? For fuck’s sake, someone in my class said that in a regular university that mark means you think it’s good enough to consider publishing it. Not that they do, but – fuck. I can’t believe it.”

“You don’t need to talk about it as if it’s something bad though.”

“I know that,” Theon sighs. “It’s just – listen, let’s be real, the one time I brought home some composition that got a good mark in elementary school, shit, it was that long ago – uh, my mom put it on the fridge. You know. Like people do with their kids’ drawings and stuff. One hour later my dad comes home, looks at it, takes it off and throws it in the trash. That was how much this kinda thing was valued where I come from. I’m not even sure I thought I could do more than average when I signed up and then he comes and tells me I’m actually good at this? I don’t even know what I should do with it.”

“Well, I think I know what to do with it,” Robb says. “Can I have the evaluation sheet?”

“What – yeah, sure. I looked at it so much that I could recite it by heart by now.” Theon shrugs and hands the sheet over.

Robb takes it and stands up – he goes to the fridge, takes off some Monty Python-themed magnet with the knight from _Holy Grail_ on it that was in the box of Jon’s _housewarming gifts_ puts the sheet firmly under it and on second thought he grabs a second (the _People’s Front of Judea_ , Jon really didn’t forgive Robb for spending three months obsessed with Python movies when they were fourteen or so…) and puts it on the bottom – at least it’s going to stick.

And then when he turns back Theon is looking at him in a way that – he doesn’t know what words he has for it but _intense_ is one for sure, and he looks as if he’s on the fence of doing something, and then –

“Ah, fuck this,” he says, and then he stands up, crowds Robb against the fridge and –

“You know, sometimes I ask myself if you’re even real,” he says, and okay, that was not what Robb had assumed he’d say.

“Wait, what – I _am_?” Robb says.

“Well, yeah, good thing for me, but – it’s just – listen, if you have a problem just tell me to fuck off and we can forget about it, but that, that just – you know what, fuck it.”

And then he goes and puts a hand on the side of Robb’s face and moves closer and –

The moment their lips touch, Robb doesn’t even stop to think about it – he’s been having daydreams about it long enough and they’re definitely going to talk about it later, but now he reaches up, puts a hand at the back of Theon’s head and kisses back without wasting precious time. For a moment Theon freezes, he obviously wasn’t expecting it, but then he goes for it. His other hand goes to the other side of Robb’s face and his tongue slips inside Robb’s mouth and then he moans into it, and damn but that about made Robb’s knees go weak, and so he doesn’t move away and keeps the kiss going until he really has to come up for air.

“Well, fuck,” Theon breathes a moment later, “I wasn’t really putting much hope into it but that just –”

“You _weren’t_? Theon, damn it, the only reason I never tried to put a move on you was that – well, I don’t know how’s the etiquette but I had assumed that you weren’t, you know, looking for relationships? God, this sounds awful, probably, but –”

Theon actually laughs at that, moving closer. “Case is,” he says, “it’s not as awful as you think. I mean, in your position I wouldn’t have assumed someone who has sex for a living is looking for a steady relationship, but case is, looks like I’m out of work in that sense. Not that I’ll miss it, I think, so you’re welcome to put any moves you want. If you do.”

“Shut up,” Robb says, “I really think I do. And you know, I wouldn’t have had issues if – I mean, oh shit, this is going to sound horrible, but –”

“You mean that you’d still want to put the moves if I was having sex for a living? Charming, but I think I’m done. It’s just – I managed to do fine for years and I thought I had figured it out, and then…” He shrugs, motioning at his face. “I can’t do that anymore.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m overtly sad if I don’t have to share.”

Theon shakes his head and kisses him again, and Robb goes with it – it’s slower now, but more focused and less frantic, and he shudders a bit when Theon moans a little into his mouth all over again. His cheeks are flushed when they move apart again, both of them breathing in deeply.

“You know,” Theon croaks, his voice hoarse, “this is probably embarrassing.”

“What is?”

“I haven’t kissed anyone since I was eighteen.”

“What?”

“Told you. One of the foulproof ways of not getting attached or giving people strange ideas is kissing them when they’re paying you for it. And not many people want to kiss a stranger who just blew you. I might be out of practice.”

“I don’t think it will be a problem,” Robb replies, trying to not let it show how much that is affecting him – the bare idea that he’s been Theon’s first in that sense in years is threatening to make his knees buckle for good.

“Also – shit, well, I assumed I wouldn’t need it because I don’t have to pay rent, but –”

“Come on, what suggests you I’d kick you out _now_? And the damned cats like you better than me anyway. I think we have that figured out anyway and it was going fine until now, you can totally just be my cat sitter and do your uni work until you figure shit out. I won’t mind at all.”

“Yeah, well, you’re terrible with those poor cats. You didn’t even _name_ them.”

“I know. Well, how about you do that? They like you better, right?”

“Wait, for real?”

“Why not? I’m shit at names. My old dog was named Grey Wind because he was grey and he was fast and every one of my siblings agreed that it was the dumbest name out of all the six dogs in the house.”

“It’s not _dumb_ , it’s just… unimaginative. I guess.”

“Well, just think about it. Now, since from what I gather we both wanted to _act on this_ and that we might have skipped the part where first thing you kiss someone first, then date them and then move in, how about we go catch a movie or something like that instead of discussing how much imagination I didn’t have when I was six?”

For a moment Theon just stares at him. “Wait, when you said –”

He stops. Robb just looks at him and –

Theon just starts laughing in a way that’s borderline hysterical, even if – it looks like… the liberating kind of hysterical? He’s also hanging on to the fridge, which might look halfway worrying, though.

“Hey.” Robb reaches out to take his arm. “Are you all right?”

“Maybe,” Theon wheezes. “It’s just – this is – what if I tell you that I’ve never _dated_ anyone?”

“What, never?”

“No one wanted to _date_ me in high school. I mean, a lot of people were more than available for a hook up, but no one wanted their kid to hang around me. And there was hardly time for dating later. This is so fucking weird.”

“Huh. Well, I did date a few people. Fancy a crash course?”

Theon reaches up to wipe a few laugh tears as he says that yes, he does.

\--

They go to the cinema around the corner – it’s just one movie showing and it’s some dumb romantic comedy that makes Robb start groaning after three minutes, but then they spend the entirety of it making out and so the horrid plot isn’t an issue. After that, even if Theon protests, he drags him to this place next to the cinema which is kind of a less-terrible-than-usual fast food – it’s a few American students who put together a fairly accurate resemblance of a diner and serve your usual burger and fries, but it’s quality ingredients and doesn’t actually smell like shitty fast food. Theon mock protests – _this shit is so unhealthy, please_ – but then he definitely doesn’t when he sees the triple chocolate cake on display.

“Not so unhealthy anymore, right?” Robb asks when Theon is eating it very, very slowly. He went for apple pie instead.

“Well, sometimes you can make exceptions,” Theon admits, and he doesn’t seem too reluctant as he does.

Robb reaches out and grasps at the hand Theon has on the table, the one not holding the fork, and threads their fingers together, and Theon’s cheeks flush ever so slightly as he grasps back.

\--

Later, Robb tells him that if he wants to share the bed – they don’t have to do anything more than that if he doesn’t feel up for it – he’s welcome to. Theon looks at him in that way he cannot quite describe again but then accepts.

Robb is fairly prepared to wake up during the night, but the two of them sleep through it and the next morning he wakes up to Theon staring down at him from the other side of the bed, and he wishes that it was one of those mornings when the sun is out and the room is bathed in warm light and it all looks out of crappy chick flicks, but no, it’s cloudy, it rains and there’s nothing romantic about the atmosphere, never mind that Theon’s bruises have become even darker, but it’s still the nicest morning he’s had in months and he says it.

Theon hits him in the face with his pillow.

“By the way,” he says, and then he flushes a bit, “I woke up one hour ago.”

“You could have –”

“No sense in waking you up at seven in the morning on a fucking week-end, Robb. Anyway, I was thinking about – _things_ , and it was a bad idea, so I figured I’d just think about your precious cat names.”

“Fine. So what did you decide?”

“Well. One is male and the other is female, right?”

“Well, I did get that far.”

“Uhm. What about Oliver and Constance?”

For a moment Robb doesn’t see the connection.

Then it kicks in and – he has to laugh, all right? “Fine,” he manages to say, “fine, sure, let’s just be dorks and name them after two known adulterers, who cares if they’re siblings.”

“Was that a yes?”

“Of course it was a yes, it’s not like I could come up with a better option anyway. Sure, why not. Too bad the male one isn’t red.”

Theon hits him with the pillow again and Robb just grabs his own and hits him back.

\--

They agree to keep it down especially in front of other neighbors – Selyse Baratheon still glares at both of them whenever they run into each other but Robb just pays her no notice. When he comes around to telling his parents and siblings, starting with the first time they talked and finishing with the damned cats and not dishing out details about how bad off Theon was when he knocked on his door, the entire room is silent for – well, it’s probably not longer than half a minute but it feels way more than that. Then –

“Robb, that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Sansa says, sounding sincerely moved at that, and – really?

“What –”

“I mean, love at first sight doesn’t happen that easily!”

Bless his sister for being barely out of high school and for not having lost her trust in fairytale happy endings even if the only boyfriend she’s had until now was a complete asshole.

Jon just stares at him. “I can’t believe you named your cats after people in _Lady Chatterley’s lover out of everything_ ,” he mutters under his breath. “You really like this guy, don’t you?”

“Well, the cats like him better than me anyway.”

“That’s the sappiest thing I ever heard,” Arya groans.

“Listen,” his dad cuts in, thankfully – for now –, “if you’re really sure about it and if you both like each other – good for you. And it’s your life and your house. But – when you – I mean, you still haven’t –”

“Dad, _no_ ,” Robb groans.

“Good,” his mom chimes, “as long as you bring him over for dinner and he swears in my face that he’s going to get tested before you two even think about –” She stops, suddenly seeming to realize that there’s a ten year old in the room.

“Mom, you can say it. It’s not like I don’t know that you mean the two of them _doing it_ ,” Rickon shrugs before going back to his Iron Man comic book.

Robb wants to put his head under some sand in shame right the fuck now.

“Don’t worry,” he stammers, figuring it’s just about time he says it, “he went for tests every two months anyway and he said he’s going for another soon.”

“Well, good thing he was responsible about it,” his mom declares.

Robb is never going to survive this conversation.

\--

In spite of it, he survives it and gets to the first school play showing in one piece. Incidentally, it’s the day Theon says he’s going to take his STD tests – it’s not like he could have a reasonable excuse to show up at an elementary school play when he’s not related to anyone and in case Selyse Florent goes it would definitely be a bad idea.

Turns out he was worrying for nothing – Selyse is not at the play, but the infamous father is, along with another man who Robb figures might be the guy’s best friend who didn’t let him come alone. Robb only knows because Shireen looks ecstatic that he’s come and proceeds to point them out to him.

Against all odds, it goes pretty well – the only kid forgetting one of his lines is the second grader playing Tiny Tim, but the alternative he comes up with before someone can suggest him the right line has the audience cracking up, so he figures that’s a win. No one in the props department misses a part, everyone puts a fair amount of effort into their acting even if to be entirely honest Shireen is definitely the best of the lot, and by the time it’s over – well, Robb had grown to hate the damned script, but looking at it from the outside it’s not that terrible.

He also watches the audience – Shireen’s dad looks like a pretty uptight guy, but he looks at the entire performance with the face of someone who’s very proud of their kid, and even if he doesn’t shout or clap overtly, it’s obvious from the way he kind of maybe smiles outright whenever Shireen is on stage. The best friend claps for two, anyway.

After it’s over, he just stays in the back – there’s another teacher supposed to supervise everyone else while they change their costumes and leave and at most shakes a few hands.

That, until Shireen shows up with both dad and best friend in tow.

“Stannis Baratheon,” the man introduces himself. Robb takes his hand.

“Robb Stark, nice to meet you,” he says. When they’re done shaking for a moment no one says anything, and then –

“I hadn’t realized you were so young,” the man starts.

“Uh, well, I’ve only been here some three years –”

The best friend openly elbows him. “What Stannis here meant is that he’s old fashioned enough not to assume that _young_ people might want to teach elementary school, and he’s been muttering the entire night about you having to have some kind of skill at this job if you managed to put that up with kids from six different classes without going insane. And there’s also something else he’d like to tell you, but I’m not going to play messenger for you on this one.”

At that, he obviously goes to wait for Shireen next to the door leading to the backstage. Stannis is looking maybe a tad embarrassed.

“My apologies,” he starts. “My ex-wife used to say I was the death of all her social interactions.”

“I live in the apartment above hers,” Robb says, “I think I can imagine. And if it’s any help, if she says something I’d rather assume the contrary.”

The corners of Stannis’s mouth curl up ever so slightly. “Well, she was right about _that_.”

“If her social interactions were anywhere like her, my own apologies, but I’d have become a hermit.”

At that, Stannis smiles maybe a tiny bit wider.

“Then I guess you do understand. Anyway – we married when we were very young out of… let’s say family pressures. I wanted to direct plays and instead I had to support a family and went into insurance.”

“ _Ouch_ ,” Robb says sympathetically.

“And – well, my daughter knew that, and my ex-wife’s opinion was that it was all a waste of time. Anyway, she did audition for the school play a few years ago but – let’s say that in between her peers being idiots and the directors being way less skilled at handling them than you were it never went anywhere, so she stopped trying. And I know she didn’t audition in the first place. So – thanks for that.” It comes out slightly stilted, but Robb can appreciate the sincerity. At that, he figures he just might go all in.

“You’re welcome, but – I don’t know if I’d have gotten over my fear of your ex’s wrath if my – uhm, roommate hadn’t encouraged me.”

“Your – oh. Right, Shireen did say something about him. Mostly, that whenever they interacted he was perfectly nice and that her mother hates him. Which means that I couldn’t care less if you’re _roommates_. Besides. That’d be hypocritical.”

“Hypocritical?”

Then Stannis nods at his left, Robb sees the Best Friend greeting Shireen as if they actually were related and – oh. So maybe the guy is not the Best _Friend_ after all.

“Oh. I thought you were friends.”

“We also were,” Stannis confirms. “But my ex never liked him either. He had a labour party subscription in the Eighties – he has it now, for that matter – and he comes from a family of miners.”

Suddenly Robb understands why Selyse _didn’t_ like the guy, who to Robb seems like a perfectly nice person.

“Well then, it was my pleasure. Let me tell you, it was hell on earth to put this thing together but having someone who was good at it and wanted to do it in the play really made my life easier. If I get the short straw for the next semester’s play I totally want her in it.”

Stannis makes a face that pretty much equals radiating happiness coming from someone who’s obviously _not_ a social butterfly, and then he gets swept in by his kid being overtly ecstatic and hugging him from behind. The boyfriend introduces himself as Davos Seaworth and is definitely more of a social butterfly, and he laughs openly when Robb tells him that he has a labour party subscription _now_ , too, and after everyone’s left he decides that overall it was a success.

\--

On the next day, he figures that maybe Selyse will show up instead of her husband. Instead Davos is there again – he tells Robb that Stannis has to work in the mornings and leaves it at that.

On the third and last, it’s the two of them again and then Stannis comes up to him saying that since he has to bring Shireen home anyway he could give him a ride.

Robb accepts it and when Selyse glares at the sight of him and Shireen getting off the same car Robb just shrugs, wishes her happy holidays and runs upstairs trying not to laugh out loud before he actually reaches his apartment.

\--

On Christmas, Robb drags Theon over to his family’s – Theon hadn’t sounded too enthusiastic, but after Robb convinces him that he did talk to his parents and they have no issues with his previous line of work and really, Sansa has told all of her friends about their _amazing love story_ he comes along and insists to bring at least some dinner over.

Robb is pretty sure Theon wins his parents over the moment they see the Christmas pudding, Sansa was already won over and when the worst that happens is him and Jon getting into a fairly low-heated argument about how inappropriate is naming kittens after people who spend an entire novel having sex in fairly imaginative ways, he decides that it was a win.

\--

A couple of days before school starts again, Theon comes home with an unreadable look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Robb asks as he glances at the tests he has to grade before tomorrow morning – he completely slacked off during the holidays.

“Technically nothing. I mean, I got the STD tests results.”

“And?”

“And it’s all negative,” Theon says. “Which is good – I mean, I know I was clean in November and the psychopath – was one, but he also wasn’t the kind to get STDs, but – anyway, I’m clean.”

“Then why are you saying it as if it was a death sentence?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I have no fucking clue.”

“Listen, it’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you, because believe me I _do_ , but it’s not – I mean, I wasn’t holding back waiting for the test results. We don’t have to do anything if you don’t feel up to it, it’s not like I’ll get tired of waiting if you don’t put out.”

Theon glances at his evaluation sheet from the Lawrence paper still up on the fridge. “Yeah, it’s – it’s not that I don’t know that, but try putting into practice.”

“I get it, but just in case you need a reminder – like, I know that you’re good at plenty other things that aren’t getting me laid.”

“Well, damn, now this is getting even more ridiculous because – shit, the thing is that – I _want_ to get you laid. I really want that. But I… can’t just right now?”

“It’s not ridiculous. For fuck’s sake, the left side of your face is still green, I’m not taking it personally. We can _both_ get laid when you feel like it. And go pet one of the kittens some more, it might make you look less like you just walked out of a funeral home.”

“Yeah, fuck you very much.”

Whatever – Theon does follow the advice five minutes later. Robb grins into his mug of herbal tea and doesn’t mind at all that both his cats like Theon fairly better than they’ll ever like him. Never mind that it might be their cats at this point.

\--

“I met our lovely Mrs. Florent in the elevator,” Theon says days later as he comes into the kitchen, dropping groceries on the table.

“I imagine it was an experience you don’t want to repeat,” Robb replies as he puts away the quiz he’s just finished grading.

“Well, maybe I would. I mean, first she starts asking me how long am I going to _live out of your food_ , and then tells me that two months in here are enough to make people talk and so on. I told her that _I_ buy your food and that you were probably better off if someone else was in charge of it, since you poison whatever you cook. And she was about to completely lose it at me, except that I was jostling too many bags and this fell down from my backpack. Should’ve remembered not to leave it half-open.”

Theon slides another evaluation sheet towards him – it’s for another English Lit paper that Robb proofread last week. It was about the _Robinson Crusoe_ sequels, a topic Robb knows absolutely nothing about since he’s only read the original.

There’s a 68 stamped on top of it, along with another glowing evaluation which also lists every weakness that can be worked on, but it’s still pretty damned good.

“I imagine she was surprised?”

“You wouldn’t want to know,” Theon snorts. “First she turned completely red and then she just – handed it back to me and ran off at her own floor. To be honest I’d like to do it again just for the satisfaction of seeing her speechless.”

“Excellent,” Robb says, “if anyone complains at the next tenants’ meeting I can just bring over a few copies.”

And then he stands up and puts that piece of paper on the fridge as well – it’s a question of principle at this point.

“You know, you don’t have to do that,” Theon says.

“I know.” Robb puts the third Monty Python magnet back in its place. “I don’t do it because I feel like I have to.”

He turns, not quite expecting Theon to be _just behind him_ , and he’s looking at Robb in that intent way that always makes him want to sit down just in case his legs give out, and –

“I think I have a problem,” he says, still staring at him.

“Is – is it a problem I can help with?”

“I think you just might,” Theon keeps on. “See, there are plenty of ways in which I am completely screwed up –”

“Less than you think, if I can –”

“No, in this sense I _am_. Shit, this is embarrassing.”

“How about you just say it? Because if it’s about –”

“Yes, it’s _about_ , and the problem is that I’ve spent some six years using it as a fucking business transaction. And – fine, two months ago I wasn’t up for sex in the first place, but – let’s just say that some part of me thinks fucking people is just for clients. And you’re _not_ a client.”

Robb nods once, figuring that it makes a fair amount of sense – now he just wants to know the conclusion. Even if he thinks he gets it. “I guess not. So that means –”

“It means I _want_ you to screw me senseless, but I’m never going to start it because if I did that’d make it too similar to a business transaction,” he groans, sounding fairly embarrassed.

Robb smiles. “Are you telling me to put a move on you because otherwise we’ll both stay a lot more chaste than we’d both like for a very long time?”

“I knew I didn’t like you just for your good looks, your appalling fashion sense and your cats.”

“Maybe it’s because _I let you name my cats_ ,” Robb grins.

“That, too. So, are you going to go ahead and let me show you a good time or what?”

“When you ask so nicely, _for once_ ,” Robb says, and then figures that he should just follow the advice.

When he drags Theon forward and kisses him without too much finesse Theon kisses back at once, and before they can wreck the fridge Robb moves away and more or less manages to lead the two of them towards his bedroom – he kicks the door open and they stumble in without having broken apart yet, and they do just when they both unceremoniously fall on the bed.

Robb is on the bottom since he’s the one who kicked the door open, and he makes no motion to change it – he’s fine with it, really, also it’s not like he’s ever done this with a guy so he might as well not take the lead. Especially if Theon hasn’t been with anyone since –

He never quite finishes that trail of though because then Theon rolls over to the side and he’s not on top anymore.

“Uhm,” Robb says, aware that he’s sounding completely embarrassed, “how should we – because I mean, I’ve been with girls, but not really with guys, so if you’d rather –”

“Robb,” Theon cuts him, “case is, I happen to have preferences.”

“Okay. I’ll hear them?”

At that, Theon just grabs the lapels of his shirt and tugs, bringing him resolutely on top and keeping his hands firm on Robb’s shoulders.

“This would be one. And I can worry about the rest,” he says, grinning, and then his hips arch up against Robb’s at once. He’s definitely as hard as Robb is, and Robb’s jeans have been constraining for a bit by now.

“Oh, so now you _are_ getting me laid? Good.”

“Yeah, well,” Theon says against Robb’s mouth as he slowly, slowly grinds against him – Robb groans out at once –, “my previous line of work did teach me something.” Before Robb can say that he couldn’t care less, he’s dragged down again, and shit but the way Theon kisses him makes him almost dizzy sometimes, considering how intent he can be about it, never mind that if he thinks that he’s the first person Theon’s done this with in years it never fails to make his head spin.

“Besides,” Theon breathes out after they’re done kissing, “maybe I’ve been wanting to blow you for a while.”

“Shit, you can’t tell that to a guy if you actually want him to perform while you’re doing that,” Robb blurts out, because what the hell should he even say after that kind of comment?

“I’d just put you back in the mood,” Theon goes on, sounding like he’d actually relish the prospect.

Not that Robb doesn’t feel his blood rush downward just at the bare mention of the possibility.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on the offer next time. So, how –”

“How about you move up over here?” Theon suddenly leans back, lying down with his head propped up against slightly the headboard but the rest of his back on the mattress and – and Robb thinks he has figured that out. He lets Theon move back, his throat going dry as he stands up and gets rid of his jeans and underwear, and then he moves up on the bed again, his knees on the side of Theon’s –

“Great. But come over here,” Theon says, and shit, Robb knows he’s not going to last long at all, not with these premises. Still he goes, kneeling up above Theon who just moves around him until he’s in the right position, and shit but Robb is hard and somewhat leaking already –

“Nice,” Theon says under his breath, and then licks a stripe along the base of his cock, and shit but he has no right to do it that slowly and with such nonchalance just before taking the tip inside his mouth. Robb puts his hands on the headboard, feeling dizzy all over again, and he moans out loud the moment Theon starts sucking on it, so very slowly.

Thing is – he’s had girls do this to him, but none of them was this – this – he doesn’t even know how to put it, but it’s obvious that Theon’s taking his time to find out which points exactly he has to touch to elicit most response, and even if Robb is getting harder inside his mouth by the second he’s still taking him in bit by bit, slow but steady, while his tongue still moves around the head at regular intervals. That, until Theon kind of smirks around his dick, breathes in, moves his tongue a bit to the side but still touching the head and just –

Theon moves back, takes another deep breath and then he takes all of Robb’s cock back in at once, and then he goes forward, and forward, and it’s probably a good thing that Robb’s been leaking since the beginning because Theon is taking him all in and he’s keeping both hands on Robb’s thighs and _shit_ but it takes all of his self control not to come right this moment.

“Fuck,” he croaks, “fuck, that’s – that’s _good_ , but you didn’t have to –” he starts, and then Theon kind of manages to glare at him for a moment before his tongue moves along the side of his cock again and Robb doesn’t even remember what he was going to say.

Theon goes back to his maddening slow pace and _fuck but Robb can feel that his cock is touching the back of Theon’s throat_ and – he moves one hand down from the headboard until it’s cupping the back of Theon’s head, keeping the touch light in case it’s better that he doesn’t, but then he can feel Theon kind of humming around the head the moment he does it, and it’s not – the bad kind of?

He breathes in shakily and runs his fingers through the hair over Theon’s scalp once, twice, not tugging or pushing or anything of the kind, and he knows he’s swearing under his breath but he really can’t stop himself from doing it, and he honestly loses track of time there – he doesn’t know how long Theon keeps on working him while breathing just through his nose, but when he knows he’s going to come in moments he does tug on Theon’s hair just a bit.

“Hey,” he says, “hey, I’m almost – I’m close –”

Theon just hums again and – Robb’s hold in his hair tightens a bit and then he holds tighter to the headboard as he stills and comes into Theon’s mouth and damn but he’s swallowing it all, and apparently the position has to help because he’s not choking somehow, and Robb just feels like his blood is on fire in all the good ways. He tries not to thrust forward too much while he shudders in pleasure all over, and he doesn’t know how long it lasts but by the time he’s focusing again he’s completely spent and Theon’s tongue is still running over the head of his cock and _that_ is enough to make his blood boil all over again, but maybe he should pull back and let the man breathe freely already.

He’s panting as he pulls out, slow, and damn but Theon’s face is a mess – he’s pretty sure his chin and mouth are sticky with at least three different kinds of fluids and his cheeks are completely flushed; when Robb kneels down on the bed again and straddles him, the moment his thigh brushes against Theon’s crotch he can feel that he has to be painfully hard by now. Also, his pupils are completely blown and he’s looking way too smug for someone who’s just – pulled that off.

“Well, _wow_ ,” Robb mutters breathlessly, his hand still at the back of Theon’s head, “you’re definitely getting me laid.”

Theon snorts, moving up a bit. “Yeah?” He croaks. “Good. Now if you give me another minute –”

Robb can see where this is going, and so he kisses Theon instead of trying to talk him out of it, and he kisses him long and deep, until he knows Theon’s not going to press that issue.

“I think,” he says, moving away, “that now _I_ have to get you laid.”

“Nice,” Theon agrees, his voice still sounding fairly hoarse, not that Robb doesn’t understand why, “I’m game. There’s lube in the first drawer.”

“Wait, had you been planning that?”

“More than planning, I had it ready in case I ever got over myself.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Robb smirks, and then reaches out for the drawer and opens it. There’s lube, indeed, some no frills brand, and he places it on the free side of the bed before leaning away enough to actually open up Theon’s jeans and pull them down along with his underwear, and good thing he did because the sigh of relief that leaves Theon’s mouth at that point says everything about how much he needed some friction.

He also sees Theon spreading his legs, or at least starting to, and fine, he wants to get there –

But not right now.

“Not so fast,” he says, moving back up and leaning down so that they’re chest to chest. “I also need to get back in the mood.”

“I can worry about –”

“You worried about that enough for now. Don’t worry, I’ll get there indeed. In due time.”

Then he leans down and kisses Theon without much of a hurry, his hand going down to Theon’s cock and giving it slow strokes that won’t definitely make him come but which will at least relieve him for the moment. He keeps his other hand behind Theon’s head, his fingers still tangled in the hair at the back, and he experimentally tries scratching slightly – Theon pretty much keens inside his mouth, which is exactly what Robb had been hoping for, and so he does it again while he moves away from Theon’s mouth and starts kissing his way downwards, at least until his collarbone. Sometimes, he stops and sucks a bit on a piece of skin, and whenever he does Theon moans out a tiny bit all over again, and damn but Robb really likes being the reason those noises are happening. He smirks a little and kisses his way up again – when his mouth presses behind Theon’s ear he feels Theon shivering under him way more than he had before.

Robb moves back enough to look him in the eyes, and he doesn’t know how to put it into words but Theon just looks – like someone who doesn’t know what they’re expecting, even if not in the bad way. Or so Robb thinks, but still, better check.

“Everything all right?” He asks, momentarily stopping.

“What – yes,” Theon says, shaking his head. “It’s just – never mind.”

“No, I do mind, actually. If we’re not on the same page –”

“Believe me, we are. It’s just – I don’t know how to say it right now, but I swear I’ll tell you later. You can go on. Really. Please.”

That sounded fairly sincere, Robb thinks, and so he moves back down and scratches at Theon’s head again, feeling him getting harder in other hand some more, and damn, he might have come not long ago, but he’s definitely feeling interested all over again. Sure, not enough to move forward, but still –

He grabs the lube, opens it up with one hand and puts a generous amount on his index finger, then he moves back.

“You can spread your legs now.”

“Oh, _finally_ ,” Theon breathes out, and he does, and Robb moves back, ready to start, and –

“You can start with two,” Theon says then, sounding… fairly nonchalant about it.

“Uh, sorry? I mean, you haven’t done this in a few months, I think I should take it slower.”

“No need to worry. I mean, uh, job hazards. I always started with two. It’s more convenient. It might have been a while but I can take that.”

Robb thinks he might have a lot to say about it, but this is not the time or place.

“Great to know, but _I_ am getting you laid now, am I not? I’d still rather start with one. We aren’t in a hurry after all, are we?”

Theon doesn’t say anything just then – Robb doesn’t waste time and starts going in slow, very slow, pouring some more lube just in case, and when he has that one finger in completely he just keeps on going in and out until it’s fairly smooth. He doesn’t push too much, not yet, also because he wants a feel for it as he’s never done that to a girl either, and Theon’s sending him a look that says _I can barely feel that at this point, you know_.

Well then. He pours more lube on his middle finger as well and pushes in two. It goes fairly smoothly even if not completely, and at that Theon’s hips arch up all over again, especially after Robb starts scissoring experimentally just a tiny bit.

“Fuck,” Theon blurts out after Robb has kind of shoved both fingers in and out again, “you’re – that’s fucking cruel.”

“Really? Too bad, but case is, I like to take my time.”

“I got that – _ah_ , do that again?”

Robb smiles and shoves two fingers in deep, again, and then he pours lube over the third as well – damn, the bottle is almost over, they’ll have to restock, and he likes that he’s thinking in these terms – and then he slides three in slowly, and at that Theon loses it – if the neighbors didn’t hear him, Robb is going to feel like it’s a bonafide miracle.

“Still too cruel?” Robb asks, unable to stop himself from doing it.

“Maybe,” Theon croaks, and his hands are gripping at the sheets fairly strongly right now. He’s also very hard, his cheeks completely flushed, but in the good way.

“Do you happen to have condoms in that drawer?” Robb asks, realizing that maybe they should have thought about that before – and fine, they’re both clean but maybe it’s better to err on the side of caution the first time.

“I thought you’d never ask, but yes,” Theon confirms, and Robb just leaves things be to put one on – good thing that he’s hard again but not so much that it might become a problem.

He quickly pours the rest of the lube into the palm of his hand, coats his cock in it, and then moves back over Theon, taking in a deep breath.

“Okay. Okay, let’s just – if I’m not doing it right just say it.”

“Shit, Robb, it’s not fucking rocket science,” Theon laughs, and then moves one leg over Robb’s back giving him entrance and yeah, okay, fine, he can do this, and so he leans down, positions himself and starts going in even slower than he’s been until this point, especially because he’d really like for things to keep on going this well now.

Theon puts his hands on his shoulders again and grabs at them, but then he nods at Robb and so he goes in deeper while Theon’s other leg reaches the first, and now they’re hooked behind Robb’s back and Robb really needs to stop stalling, and so he breathes in and thrusts. All the lube he used paid off because he doesn’t feel friction that isn’t supposed to be there, and Theon keeps on moaning sort of helplessly as Robb thrusts back and forward again while his cock is trapped in between them. Robb would like to give him a hand there but it’s not the right position, and so he keeps on using one arm to keep himself balanced and prevent crushing Theon somehow, while his free hand goes back to cupping Theon’s cheek, his thumb cradling at Theon’s jaw, and just – thing is, he’s never had sex _this_ intimate with anyone, and the fact that he’s come once already is probably good because he’s not swamped in the heat of the moment right now. He can pay attention fully, and he doesn’t need to come right this second, and he can see that Theon’s looking up at him as if _he_ also is having the best time of his life but at the same time hadn’t quite expected it to go like this.

They’ll discuss it later, he figures, and then he leans back and thrusts, again, trying to go as deep as possible and _then_ Theon says his name in a way that makes Robb’s stomach tie in knots in all the good meanings of it, and then he goes rigid for a moment, and then Robb can feel him coming against his stomach, and he _would_ just pull out and take care of it but then Theon’s hands just grab at his back, bringing him closer, and he can’t do it. So he goes on, and he leans down and kisses Theon just when he feels his own orgasm building up and – when it comes, it’s nowhere near as strong as the first but it’s still a relief, and he just gives a last thrust, groaning when Theon’s legs squeeze around his back. He presses his lips to the corner of Theon’s mouth before pulling out, moving back enough to have some room and takes Theon in hand – he was still coming, and Robb is entirely fine with at least stroking him through it, even if it doesn’t go on that much longer.

And – when he actually looks back down at him, Theon looks completely wrecked, his eyes more black than else, his cheeks flushing and his lips still parted a tiny bit – he’s taking in shallow breaths and for once he looks completely relaxed. Robb knows he should go to the bathroom, get a towel and do something to clean the both of them up because they’re filthy, but instead he just drops down on the other side of the bed. He raises his arm with the intention of throwing it over Theon’s waist very loosely, but the moment he does it and Theon notices he kind of rolls over without much finesse, pressing straight up against him, his head pressed up against Robb’s shoulder.

 _Well then_. Robb figures he’ll go along with it – he does put that arm around Theon’s back, though not as loosely as he had planned, then his other hand goes to Theon’s neck again while one of Theon’s ankles hooks over his own.

“Guess it wasn’t rocket science,” he says, figuring someone should break the silence.

Theon laughs against his neck. “See, you figured that out at once.” He also sounds fairly exhilarated. “And if I had been less of an idiot I’d have told you to get me laid a lot sooner.”

Robb shakes his head. “You did it when you wanted to, it’s fine. I didn’t need to get you laid a lot sooner.”

“Not the point,” Theon mutters, and then burrows in closer. “By the way. Before. When you were asking if we were on the same page.”

“What about that.”

“I really couldn’t – put that into a sentence at that point. But it was – oh, shit, let’s just say that _you_ can be a bit overwhelming when a guy isn’t adjusted to just laying back and let someone else do the work and actually enjoy it. That was about it.”

There are a lot of things Robb could answer to that. First of which, _it’s really criminal that someone putting you first makes you feel that overwhelmed_ , but then again why the hell should he even go there? They have time. And he has time to work on that, anyway.

“Well, nice. I was worried I’d end up underperforming,” he says instead, and Theon just glares at him before laughing all over again.

“Nah, you definitely should not worry about that. But if you want to up the game a bit, I might have ideas for next time.”

“I could hear them, next time,” Robb agrees, tucking stray strands of damp hair behind Theon’s ear, and for a moment he just basks in the best afterglow he can remember having in his life, and then obviously it gets interrupted by what sounds like his cats pitifully meowing from the other side of the door.

“I don’t think anyone’s fed them since this afternoon,” Theon mutters.

“And we both need cleaning up. Okay, I’ll just get up and feed them while you take a shower or whatever? Because if we both take a shower we’re not going to accomplish a thing.”

“That sounds sadly accurate. Fine, go feed the cats.”

He’s laughing as he shoves Robb off and Robb just shakes his head, puts on his discarded jeans and heads out of the room. He feeds the cats, who don’t notice that he’s glaring daggers at them most probably, and waits for Theon to get out of the bathroom before going in. When he’s washed at least the bare minimum he goes back to bed to find out that Theon changed the sheets.

“Good thinking,” he says, climbing in and pressing up against Theon’s back.

“Yeah, well, I’d have liked to see either of us sleeping in that mess,” Theon mutters, moving back against him. Robb smirks against the back of his head and only ends up asleep after Theon does, his fingers feeling Theon’s pulse, wrapped around his wrist.

\-- 

The next morning, he wakes up in that same position, with the faint knowledge that he should get up and grade tests already since he’s going back to work tomorrow, but Theon’s still pressed up against him, he has a hand clamped on Robb’s wrist, and he’s warm and completely boneless against his hold, and – yeah. He’s going to worry about needing to get up early later. He tightens his hold just a tiny bit, hears Theon hum fairly contentedly as he does.

“You awake?” He slurs, his brain still having not caught up with his mouth.

“More or less,” Theon says, sounding like someone who’s been awake far longer than him.

“You know,” Robb says, knowing he’ll regret it in the afternoon, “while I should grade tests, maybe I can do that after lunch. I could call that bar downstairs and ask them to deliver some breakfast. I’m entirely not above spending the next two hours in bed.”

Theon turns towards him, not caring to move back, though. “I can’t say I wouldn’t be amenable to that,” he says. His hair is completely disheveled, and as amenable as the both of them are Robb doesn’t call the bar until a long time later, when Theon’s breathing in deep next to him and Robb has taken care of starting the morning with what he figures was a more than passable handjob. Too bad he can’t start every morning like this, but he could get adjusted to it.

\--

That doesn’t happen, but they do spend the next month making up for _all the time they wasted not getting laid_ , as Theon puts it, never mind that a few of Robb’s colleagues actually come up to him asking if he’s seeing someone because he looks fairly happier than usual. Robb says _something like that_ and leaves it at it, and if he’s smiling to himself as he answers what’s the harm in it?

Then one evening he comes home to Theon having put together a more impressive dinner than usual, at least for his standards, never mind that he looks – not nervous, not exactly, but something in between that and moderately excited.

“What’s up?” Robb asks without making it sound like it’s some kind of big deal. “I mean, not that I didn’t need a pick me up when they dumped the second semester school play on me again –”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah. I’m cornering Shireen tomorrow, whatever they decide we should put up. But anyway, is there a special occasion?”

“Er, well, maybe?”

“Maybe?”

Theon grabs some cat food and pours it in the bowls instead of looking at him as he speaks. “I was coming back from class today and – you know the pub around the corner?”

“The one with the ad saying they have the best onion rings in town? Yeah, I’ve been there sometimes. The onion rings are good, actually. So?”

“So they had a sign saying they needed a new bartender part time. I, uh, might have gone in and asked about it.”

“Yeah? And how did that go?”

“Er, the kid at the check out sent me to his dad who was the owner, the guy did the interview on the spot. He asks me if I ever did that before, and I kind of told him I did even if it was illegal, and – I don’t know, he looked fairly nice and I ended up telling him the entire story. And I thought that’d have kind of killed my chances but then he says like, _ah, so you are the infamous guy living with Robb Stark_.”

“What?”

“Yeah, my reaction exactly. Turns he’s – er, Stannis Baratheon’s _best friend_ with a lot of benefits.”

“Wait, _Davos Seaworth_?”

“Yes, him exactly. Anyway, turns out that he knew the story already more or less, and that he didn’t get many applicants at this point and long story short, he hired me.”

Robb thinks he can see where this is going.

“So – I mean, I just figured – maybe I could contribute to rent from… well, not _now_ on, but when I have a couple paychecks under my belt?”

Robb stands up, grabs the other cat food bag and pours it in the bowl next to the one Theon is worrying about, kneeling next to him on the floor, and while he does it he takes Theon’s free hand with his.

“I think,” he says, “that my landlord would be entirely amenable to put your name on the lease, too, if you were splitting with me.”

“Robb, wait –”

“And I think that I would relish the occasion to bring you up to the tenants’ meeting if you had the legal grounds to come with me, because _that_ would about make my year.”

“… Seriously?”

“Just imagine it.”

Theon obviously humors him, because a moment later he just starts laughing without even trying to keep it in. “Shit, you’re right. That’d be just – and imagine if _she_ asks where I found the money to split the rent with.”

Robb gets another laughing fit, so strong it almost brings tears to his eyes. “Right. Right, deal. And by the way? Yes, regardless of that, I want you on that lease.”

He wipes at his eyes with the hand he doesn’t have tangled with Theon’s, and then he looks at his left again and Theon is also wiping at his face, even if it’s more than a couple stray tears.

“Good,” he says, “because I think I really want to be there, too.”

The cats walk all over them to reach their food and Theon stands up, but then Robb motions for him to just bring the plates down. They end with Robb leaning against the fridge with Theon’s back pressed up against his own, their plates more or less balanced on their legs. The cats just glare at them from the other side of the room as if they think they’re being utterly ridiculous – Robb thinks they have a point or ten, but he’ll take that.

“Robb?”

They had been silent for so long Robb startles a bit.

“Yes?”

“What if – maybe I want to tell you something that I never told anyone else and which I never thought I’d, well, have the chance to tell anyone else? Or would that be too soon?”

Robb thinks he can imagine what it is about. Good thing he doesn’t have to think about the answer.

“If you want to say it, I think I’d answer – I’d say, _me, too_.”

Theon turns back to look at him and his eyes are bright in a way that would make Robb’s knees go weak if he weren’t sitting down already, and when he moves upwards, his mouth inching closer to Robb’s before he clears his throat and breathes in, Robb is ready to hear what he had to say.

Turns out, he was right.

 

End.


End file.
